America/Conor O'Clery:The tipping point in the crisis at the New York Times apparently came when its publisher, Arthur Sulzberger jnr, visited the Washington Bureau on Tuesday to ask their views over a brown bag lunch.
There has been tension between Washington and the head office but he found the staff in a state of rebellion. The disgraced New York-based reporter Jason Blair had been given the lead on the Washington sniper story and had written fictitious accounts without leaving his Brooklyn apartment. Top editors in Times Square had never asked for his sources, despite warnings from the Washington staff.
Bureau chief Jill Abramson, not a favourite of Raines, had also heard rumours that her job would be given to the paper's chief correspondent, Patrick Tyler. She got unexpected confirmation of this from a limousine driver who picked her up at the airport, and not knowing who she was, boasted of driving Mr Tyler, an important man at the New York Times, who was going to be head of the Washington bureau, according to the Wall Street Journal, which is working on a major investigation into the paper. Some lady there had the job but she will soon leave, the chauffeur said. Mr Tyler, currently in Iraq, reportedly denied saying anything to the driver.
Back in New York on Tuesday evening, the publisher met Raines and his managing editor, Gerald Boyd, to discuss their future. In the five weeks since the Blair scandal broke, resentment had grown over a system of favouritism that allowed Blair to escape undetected as a journalistic con-man.
Many hard-working staff were furious that Raines did not defend them against a charge made by another fallen favourite, reporter Rick Bragg, that it was common practice for Times journalists to rely on stringers to do most of the real reporting.
Members of the Times board, including Sulzberger's father Arthur Sulzberger and vice-chairman Michael Golden, had by now concluded change was necessary. The editors' position had become untenable and there was concern about the potential damage from the Wall Street Journal investigation. At 10:31 a.m. on Thursday, staff at the paper received an e-mail announcing a 10:30 a.m. meeting in the newsroom. Reporters and editors were still making their way there as Raines announced that he and Boyd were resigning. Raines left with his wife Krystyna, who originally came to the US from Poland to study Yeats.
A little later former executive editor Joseph Lelyveld was greeted with some hugs and smiles as he arrived for the 4 p.m. editorial conference.
It was an emotional climax to a crisis at the world's most prestigious newspaper, with considerable implications for media coverage of American politics. With the Democratic Party in disarray, the New York Times under Howell Raines had become the unofficial opposition in the US. In a media culture where commercial interests dominate, the newsroom in the New York Times drives the paper, whose motto is "All the news that's fit to print". Unlike the Washington Post it did not support the war against Iraq and its editorial pages covered political issues aggressively. Maureen Dowd and Paul Kruger often drove the Bush administration crazy with their scathing columns. Raines sometimes campaigned too aggressively on social issues, as when he urged Tiger Woods to boycott the Masters at Augusta because the club does not admit women, and then spiked two columns from staff who said Tiger should be allowed just to play golf.
There has been considerable gloating from the right over the loss of credibility by the New York Times, and over the catastrophic effort to encourage diversity (Blair is African-American).
A year ago Raines had stood at the same spot in the newsroom taking applause after the Times won an unprecedented seven Pulitzer Prizes for its 9/11 reporting, which he said would be studied and taught as long as journalism is studied and practised. It is the fall of Howell Raines, a media tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, that will be studied in journalism courses in years to come.
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Martha Stewart got as much attention when she was hauled into a Manhattan court on Wednesday, dressed in beige pant suit with matching raincoat and umbrella, as if she was O.J. Simpson.
By pleading not guilty to securities fraud charges, the founder and embodiment of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia ensures a sensational criminal trial.
To many Martha is the intimidating monster featured in an NBC documentary-drama this week, an ego-driven homemaker from hell who created a company worth $1.5 billion at its peak, and is about to get her comeuppance.
To millions more she is the self-made woman who has earned their gratitude for teaching perfect homecraft.
Her main crime may be that she is rich and famous and has been singled out to make an example. Prosecutors devoted huge resources to make the case that 18 months ago she sold shares in the pharmaceutical company of her friend Sam Waxall after being tipped off that the price would fall following the failure of the company's big new cancer drug, Erbitux.
The use of insider information alone would not be so serious if she had not allegedly changed an incriminating phone log and lied to the FBI.
In a supremely ironic twist, new tests published on Sunday show that Erbitux does after all shrink cancer tumours and the company's shares are going up again.
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The latest target of US Attorney General John Ashcroft, who made news when he had a nude statue covered up at the US Department of Justice, are the gays and lesbians who work there and form a group known as DOJ Pride. They have been barred from holding their annual gay pride meeting at the Department's headquarters. Last year Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson addressed more than 100 people at the event but conservative groups kicked up a fuss. Officials told DOJ Pride they could not go ahead this year because President Bush had, for the first time, refused to recognise Gay Pride Month with a formal proclamation.
Mr Ashcroft received a setback in another moral crusade he is conducting against the use of marijuana for medicinal or recreational use. Federal authorities had arrested and tried Ed Rosenthal for growing pot under an Oakland, California, medical marijuana ordinance. The federal judge refused to allow the jury to hear that Rosenthal acted within local laws, and he was found guilty on felony drug charges. Jury members later protested at being deceived and at sentencing on Wednesday the judge imposed only a one-day term in prison and a $1,000 fine. "This is Day One to bring down the marijuana laws," Mr Rosenthal said.
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Barbara Bush, wife of the first President Bush, is said to be writing a memoir that settles scores with some of her husband's tormentors, such as Ross Perot and Maureen Dowd. Sharon Bush, the estranged wife of her son Neil, who had an extramarital affair with a former assistant to Barbara Bush, is also working on a tell-all story - of life inside the Bush dynasty. And biographer Kitty Kelley is working on her own book on the Bushes, which will leave no stone unturned.